Kolya on 13/2/2016 at 20:38

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In any case, I think it's very cool, that games like this with a nuanced story and emotional gripping content finally manage to crawl out of a genre that far too long got away with: Save the princess! Or just: Kill everyone!
I would like to see more like this. Possibly with grown ups even. And better face animations.

Thirith on 14/2/2016 at 11:31

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Here's something I posted on a different forum, partly with respect to Max' rewind powers, partly to the final big decision:

[spoiler]I don't think Life is Strange needed to explain the rewind power, but ideally it should've had a coherent idea of its purpose and weaknesses, more so than it seems the game has. That thing that happens when Kate's on the roof? While it works for the scene, it still feels (especially as nothing like it ever happens again) like what they felt the game needed at that moment. Same with the sudden power to rewind to the exact moment a photo was taken. There would've been ways to make the power feel more coherent, I'm sure, but instead what we got felt relatively random.

I also think that the game unfortunately sends some mixed messages in its last hour or so. When we hear the thoughts of everyone who'll be hurt by the tornado and have our conversation with not-Max, I very much felt that there was something spiteful and perhaps even malevolent trying to guilt-trip us into letting Chloe die. None of those arguments rang true, because of the way they were presented. If they were supposed to represent Max' guilt, they came across as pretty mean, which is a side of Max we don't see otherwise, so at least to me it felt external to her. At that point I was fully willing to go back and let Chloe die. Yet Chloe's own later plea for Max to let her die came across as well-reasoned and earnest, and IMO in terms of themes and character arcs, it would have been important for Chloe's points not to be undermined by what Max experiences in her nightmare. Perhaps the nightmare should've presented the same points more earnestly, as Max's real fears and feelings of guilt (and Max is nothing if not earnest, so the diner part of the dream with its sarcasm and cynicism definitely didn't feel like her own inner thoughts to me).[/spoiler]

For the record, I decided to [spoiler]let Chloe die. Perhaps if I'd felt that Max was less of a cypher, it'd been different, but my impression was that this was Chloe's decision, and it was a decision I wanted to respect. It doesn't help that the writing and plotting concerning that decision are muddled and tied in with Max' vague powers that answer to plot rather than any internal logic.[/spoiler]

PigLick on 15/2/2016 at 01:35

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Well I thought the last episode was the weakest of the lot, but yeh particularly the finale, you know as a kid you used to write stories and then end it with "And then I woke up, it was all a dream!". To me it felt a bit like that.

PigLick on 15/2/2016 at 09:42

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You know you can play both endings?

Kolya on 18/2/2016 at 23:08

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Sorry, I'm not done here yet.

In many ways Life is Strange is the game I always wanted to play and have been waiting many years for. It's subjective, emotional, it's about morals, it creates a personal relationship with the characters. It's also visually appealing. And the soundtrack is well chosen.
But it ends up asking you whether you actually believe that the universe wants to see an 18 year old girl dead and is willing to kill everyone plus birds and whales if you don't oblige. For what? How is Chloe different?
Multiple critics have mentioned that the ending plays into the (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays) Bury Your Gays trope. But that's not the end of it. You can play the game without ever having more than a friendship with her and it doesn't change the ending one bit. So how else is she different?
She's a troublemaker for sure and every figure of authority hastens to tell you so. From the cop in the diner to her stepfather/security officer, her mother, the teachers. She's not a rebel to you though.
She has debts with the local drug dealer, she smokes pot and tries to extort money from the rich kid. She's quick tempered and rash. She plays with guns and likes aggressive music and her room is fucked up.
Your spirit animal is a doe, while hers is a dead bull. You are incredibly sensitive and perfect, not least because you can rewind time. She makes wrong decisions all the time like never informing the cops.

You know when I was young, Chloe was normal. We listened to Nirvana and NOFX. We took drugs and had fucked up rooms. We were rash and scared and we wanted to be hippies but we couldn't afford it.
So yeah, I take this kinda personal. If any game is to be taken personal, it's this.
Those who survived of us have seen the dark sides of life and are now more gentle, more responsible persons for it. Should we have died early? Is it even reasonable to pose this question? Or is it a reactionary stance that favours those who never had to fight for their place in life?

It's not even that there was an obviously deemed correct ending, by the amount of work the devs put in it as well as the public perception of it (See the (https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/26/life-is-strange-episode-5-endings/) final RPS verdict).
There's just no logic to why that final decision even had to come up; how Chloe's life was cursed from the start. And given the choice to just walk away with her while "the universe" is happy to kill a town full of other people instead, it raises the question if this "universe" isn't just a thinly veiled device offering you the option to kill off a character who you thought "had it coming" by her own actions all the time, while allowing you to hide your resentment behind mathematics, because you saved so many more people.

I don't just doubt the decisions made by players in this game, I think that putting you in this place, to make this decision showed the real intention and attitude of the developers. And most people went with it. Because that's how we roll today. And the kids ain't alright.